Here are trailers for some of the films I featured earlier today in my SIFF 2011 Preview.
Opening Night Film: The First Grader
Submarine
The Interrupters
Terri
Without
WITHOUT from right on red films on Vimeo.
Here are trailers for some of the films I featured earlier today in my SIFF 2011 Preview.
Opening Night Film: The First Grader
Submarine
The Interrupters
Terri
Without
WITHOUT from right on red films on Vimeo.
It looks like everything in the Top Five will slightly underperform the guesstimates out there going into the weekend. But nothing shocking. There is still a tiny chance that Bridesmaids will end up beating Thor over the course of the weekend, despite what is now – scarily – a decent hold for a big opener. This puts Thor, again, in position as comparable to Hulk (69.7%), The Incredible Hulk (60.1%), and another Marvel classic, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (65.5%).
It’s a weird feeling when a 60% second weekend drop is no longer seen as a disaster. But that is how things have changed. Frontloading, as designed by the distributors. C. Nikki has been told by her keepers at Paramount that Thor will drop only 51%… oy. 58% is possible, but 59% or 60% seem more likely. I can’t find a movie with numbers that suggest a Friday drop of 65% leading to a weekend drop of 51%. We’ll see when the dust clears.
Back to Bridesmaids… a big Saturday uptick is what may or may not happen. It could surprise, if women can convince their boys that it’s going to be fun and make it a date night event. Thor is still probably a couple million beyond its grasp. But still… a solid start for a small movie in the second weekend of summer dumping ground. It’s interesting to see how the sales pitch of this being a female Hangover has worked for audiences, but irritated some self-hating feminists on principle.
A decent hold for Fast Five. It became the biggest domestic grosser of all the Fast/Furious films yesterday and was already the leader internationally. And it has at least another $50 million worldwide in it after this weekend… perhaps $100m, closing in on the $500 million worldwide mark where the big franchises live. Only the last two Bonds will have grossed more.
Something Jumping The Borrowed Broom has identical Friday-to-Friday drops.
And Priest 3D couldn’t be so bad… except that the birth of this thing was so very long and hard and expensive over time (adding 3D, etc). But Sony is pushing the movie hard overseas and it will be interesting to see if that pays off. It could be a case where it does $35 million here and $80 million overseas and everyone at Sony is pleased.
On the smaller release front, more soft numbers (thanks to VOD?) with Everything Must Go and Hesher doing about $3k a screen. Lionsgate’s Go For It is a complete tank.
Bridesmaids|Green||Green|Green|
City of Life and Death (NY)|Green||Green|Green|
The First Grader|||Green|Green|
Priest|||||
Skateland||||Yellow|
The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls||||Green|
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (NY)|||Green||
Make Believe|||Red||
Twenty-four new feature films to preview in Festival’s main program, the ‘SHOW’
Claudia Cardinale, Colin Firth and Peter Weir to receive Silver Medallion Awards
Special revival programs selected by Guest Director Michael Ondaatje
Telluride, CO – Telluride Film Festival (September 3-6, 2010), presented by the National Film Preserve is proud to announce its 2010 Festival program. Twenty-four new feature films presented by their creators in the Festival’s main program; six programs curated by 2010 Festival Guest Director Michael Ondaatje; twenty-five new short films; plus thirteen documentaries screening in the Backlot program. Celebrating works from over twenty countries, Telluride Film Festival opens Friday, September 3 and runs through Monday, September 6, 2010.
(more…)
Review: Little Women (no spoilers) - The Hot Blog
Box Office First Look - The Hot Blog
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree - The Hot Blog
It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon